ON THE NINTH CLOUD OF NETWORKING: FRIENDS, WHO ARE NOT

By Suman Lederer

Suvarna, a simple Indian girl, neither poor nor rich, lives a normal life in India. She loves life and her friends. After a traumatic experience in her young life, at the age of nineteen she goes to her mother in Germany, where she lives a carefree life. Then she goes to Austria and meets her husband. Even after experiences that test her, she does not give up, goes her way and eventually reaches a very good level in her profession. A few years later, the family moves to Jakarta for some time for professional reasons.

Unfortunately, such happiness attracts, in addition to many positive outcomes, sometimes negative reactions, most often envy. A group of women come together for different motivations and, with the support of some people who are looking for Suvarna's international contacts, target Suvarna's entire network on the most popular private and professional networking sites. After the first invented story, it's easy to keep going, so they do. The result: false accusations against Suvarna, prepared witnesses, massive intrusions into her privacy, attempted damage to her reputation through manipulated stories, the resulting destruction and spreading of her privacy, betrayal by her own friends and relatives, destruction of all trust, and unfortunately a thorough acquaintance with the dark side of human nature. One of the main purposes of all the betrayal? Networking!

Suvarna's story is an autobiographical novel that alternates between the past and the present and moves very subtly in the genres crime, psychological and conspiracy stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9783347193048

Book preview

Prologue

April 2020

Know that wherever you are in your life right now is both temporary, and exactly where you are supposed to be. You have arrived at this moment to learn what you must learn, so you can become the person you need to be to create the life you truly want. Even when life is difficult or challenging—especially when life is difficult and challenging—the present is always an opportunity for us to learn, grow, and become better than we've ever been before.

– Hal Elrod in Miracle Morning

Suvarna wrote these lines in her diary and read them over and over again. I must somehow internalize these lines, she thought. It's so difficult. Maybe if I speak them aloud, it might work. She repeated the lines aloud, several times. It made sense, but it was so hard to accept them, to accept and really internalize them. Maybe I should send them to Maximilian. That way I could put a little pressure on myself to accept them. So, she wrote Max a message with the text and the addition

Please read these lines, they sound wise, I’ll try to internalize them.

After that, she read the lines aloud again for several times. It surely would work sooner or later!

It was the first day she had gotten up earlier than usual and had gone downstairs for jogging. There had been periods earlier in her life during which she had jogged on a regular basis, not a long distance, just about 30 to 40 minutes. For a while, she had stuck to that routine until various things had come up, until she finally had given it up. After eighteen months she was now back to jogging.

It had rained that night, and the streets were still wet. In Jakarta, the pavements were usually very slippery when they were wet. She had to be careful, she was well aware of that. So, it wasn't really running, rather a slow jog, then walking for a while, then jogging again a little bit. For the beginning, she did quite well.

The night before she had figured out that going jogging the next morning would certainly help to make a fresh start, without them all, really without all of them! For the sake of networking, they had simply put the friendship with her, or acquaintance, or whatever it was, on the scrap heap. They were all free to network as much as they wanted to, connect with as many people from her network as they wanted to, and be happy with each other, without her!

The running, walking, then running again for half an hour did her good. The morning breeze, the wet trees and plants, the beautiful colourful flowers in the greenery in between, everything looked so fresh and beautiful. It really did her good!

Lots of sweat, a slightly higher pulse, some exercise, hopefully other thoughts soon, and not thinking about them all any longer! Well done, she patted herself on the shoulder in her thoughts.

1.

Suvarna

2020

Suvarna was forty-four years old, 5'5 tall, had dark brown eyes, long black hair, wheatish skin - neither too dark nor too light - and average body measurements. But she looked more like thirty-five, or at most as if she was in her late thirties. Well, there were advantages and disadvantages, she was aware of that, because she always looked younger than her actual age. Sometimes she thought that maybe there were some disadvantages in her work, that people wouldn't or couldn't take her seriously, but fortunately this thought had not proven right over time.

From childhood on, her father had taught her the importance of discipline in every area of life. Having deviated from this principle once in her life, she had returned to her origins, to the disciplined way of life that she had been taught.

Her mother had never stopped her from doing what she felt like doing, whether it was playing table tennis or badminton, going jogging, painting, taking a dance class, taking private lessons - Suvarna was free to think about what she would like to do, discuss it with her, and then she was normally allowed to participate. It was very important to her mother that Suvarna should have a degree, a job and be financially independent.

She had worked in the private sector for large international corporations and as a lecturer at universities of applied sciences. In between, she even had had the privilege of working for the United Nations. For several years now, she had been working as a freelancer for a major international corporation, for the last few years from her home in Jakarta. As such, she could work anywhere or from anywhere, be it the beach, café, train station, airport, plane, and sometimes she even did so, and she liked it.

Suvarna knew to enjoy whatever she was doing. When she was on holiday, she enjoyed her holidays to the fullest, when she was at work, she enjoyed doing her job, when she was with friends, she thoroughly enjoyed her time with them, when she was lazing around, she enjoyed lazing around, because that shouldn't be missed out either. That was typical of Suvarna.

She always spoke softly and hardly ever raised her voice. Of course, it had happened two or three times in her life that she had raised her voice, but people had to make a great effort to evoke this reaction from her. She was always friendly and polite to all people, regardless of their social or economic or hierarchical status.

She was hardworking, very organized - it almost seemed as if she had been born with the talent for excellent time management, very structured in her thinking, sometimes diplomatic and sometimes very straightforward, helpful - everybody helps in his or her own way, her talent was to listen and give advice. She liked to listen to everybody and everything, she was really good at that, and she always gave advice, when asked.

She was very eager to learn, read books from different areas of life and work, but had no particular hobby, only did sports sometimes, loved to travel to other countries - who doesn't -, liked to meet people, loved to talk on the phone with her friends from all over the world - at least she used to - all in all she was a happy person.

Her knowledge of German was excellent, on the phone, most people thought Suvarna was a native speaker and were surprised when they first met her. After her long stay in Germany, she had developed a slightly harder tone, but not always and not everyone perceived it as negative, or even noticed it at all.

It was precisely because of these character traits and talents - in addition to people's expectations of her - that she sometimes had unintended problems in her relations with others, not with all of them, not with the majority, but still here and there.

When people met her, they automatically had certain expectations without giving it much thought - the pigeon-hole thinking that one often automatically follows - but her behaviour did not at all correspond to the outward appearance. People saw a petite Indian woman with soft features, dark eyes, dark skin and dark hair. But when she started talking, you could almost hear a German speaking - her German had later adapted to Austrian German. The picture didn't fit, and on top of that, this harsh undertone, these demands she made, the approaches to solutions, some of which she knew and offered immediately, her structured approach to problems, none of it suited the picture. Some people had issues with it. Some could not pin down her behaviour, were confused, in rare cases even aggressive towards her, without being able to tell exactly why.

Suvarna was aware of it, Max too, but they could never change this expectation of the others towards her. Fortunately, this did not happen very often. Unfortunately, they had not foreseen, and could not have foreseen the extent of what was about to come. This expectation towards her was actually a big reason for her troubles with the women's group from the network.

2.

Germany, India

60‘s, 70‘s

The marriage of her parents was unusual in that both came from very different parts of India and belonged to different religions, a very unusual union at the time of their marriage - her father a Hindu-Jain from the state of Bihar in the north of India, her mother a Catholic from Kerala in the south of India.

The Jains belonged to the ancient religion Jainism, which believed in the universe, nonviolence and abstinence. The Jains believed that all living things had a soul, including plants and insects. One probably knew the picture of the Jains, where they can be seen sweeping ants off the road before moving on so as not to kill them when walking. The Jains were generally strict vegetarians. For this reason, Suvarna had been raised a vegetarian from birth. Much later in life she had tried meat, but she did not like it, because it was unfamiliar to her. Her mother had not been a vegetarian before, but after marrying Suren she had become vegetarian because it was very important to him and his family, as they were Jains.

Her father, Suren, came from the small town of Arrah in northern India. Having grown up with two sisters, he had studied nuclear physics. The renowned Atomic Energy Research Centre, which at that time had eight centres in India, had advertised a nuclear physics post at his university. Suren applied, got the job and moved to Mumbai to live and work there. Sometime later, his boss approached him and asked if he would like to go to Germany for two years to take part in an international research exchange programme. This is how he came to Karlsruhe in Germany.

Her mother, Madita, came from a small village in Kerala. Most of the villagers there made a living from fishing. One day the priest from her church asked her father if one of his daughters would like to become a nurse and work abroad and help the sick. Since her parents had a total of eight living children, the choice fell on her, still young at 17, but old enough to learn a profession and above all, help people. In a group of 20 girls, she came to Karlsruhe, Germany, to learn the profession of a nurse and in order to work at a hospital afterwards and help people.

In October, the Indo-German Society in Karlsruhe had invited all Indians and others to the Diwali Festival.

Diwali, the Festival of Lights, the biggest festival in India, celebrated every year the return of Crown Prince Rama after 14 years in exile. It was celebrated everywhere in India, with a huge firework.

The Indians abroad did not miss out on celebrating Diwali either. The pretty young girls from Kerala were very happy that they were going to meet other people from India. Although they could not speak Hindi and would not be able to talk to anyone there, they did not care, they just wanted to meet other people from India and celebrate Diwali.

And it was there that her parents met each other. Several dates followed. They would go for a walk and do some sightseeing in the city. Verbally they could not communicate with each other, except with hands and feet, but when it came to love it was sometimes not necessary to verbally understand each other. In Bihar, where Suren came from, Hindi and Bhojpuri were spoken, in Kerala, where Madita came from, Malayalam.

When it was time for Suren to return to India, Madita decided to go back to India as well, both wanted to get married. There was resistance from both families, discussions and arguments within the respective families, because the language, the traditions, the food, simply everything was different. Nevertheless, the two got together and got married. Love had triumphed! They had two children, a boy, Sandip, and a girl, Suvarna.

3.

New-Delhi

July 2019

Suvarna was on business in India, in the capital city of New Delhi. One week of business in New Delhi, then almost a week in Mumbai and then back to Jakarta, that was her travel schedule. She had meetings all week long, every day from morning till evening. She met several people who had been specified in her travel plan. She had to concentrate during each meeting, because later she would have to write a detailed report. Despite the day's stress of listening carefully, so as not to miss anything important, and in order to incorporate the information she had received during the day, she usually spent at least one or two hours in her hotel room in the evenings working on her report. Normally, she could sleep well after that. But not that evening.

She had arrived on Monday, on Tuesday one week later she was to fly to Mumbai.

There was a weekend in between, which she would spend in New Delhi. On Friday, she thought about how she would spend her weekend there, hmm … what should she do? Well, get up late, enjoy a long breakfast and drink two or three cups of Indian Masala Chai, work on the presentation that she had to hold on Monday, have lunch, do some work again, then as a reward go to the spa in the hotel, that is, for a massage. The left side of her neck hurt. Dinner, maybe yes, maybe no, a phone call home and then sleep, those were her plans; on Sunday she would do the same, that would be her weekend. Until she called Prabhakar.

As usual they talked for a while about their jobs, then about their children, when they were planning their next holiday, whether it should be a short one or longer, when a weekend holiday would be possible, what they planned to do during the weekend. Suvarna told him that she was in New Delhi for her work, and that she was thinking of taking it easy on the weekend, a little work, a little relaxation, and hopefully just a little food.

Then he suddenly asked, Why don't you meet up with Harshwardhan? He lives with his family in New Delhi. It would be great if you could visit him and his family.

Suvarna had not even thought of that. She had written to Harsh months ago and he had told her that he and his family had moved to New Delhi and were now living there. True, she could do that, but what would she converse about, she hadn't seen him for twenty-two years, they had rarely written to each other, although it had not been that difficult any longer since the social networks had come into being. She did not know his wife and two children. On the other hand, she had nothing else to do. Well, she could write him and inform him that she was in town and had some spare time. If it worked out with a meeting, fine, otherwise she had planned a relaxed day anyway. So, she sent him a message. As luck would have it, he was free on Saturday from noon on,

We would be very happy to welcome you to our home. Who would have thought that we would meet in New Delhi at my place! I'll come with the kids tomorrow and pick you up around noon, be ready.

To her surprise, it was all relaxed and nice, his wife, Mandira, was very likeable, easy going and communicative, his children, fourteen and twelve, a little reserved at the beginning but chattier with every minute that Suvarna spent there. When his son caught her alone in the living room for a few minutes, he wanted to know from her whether his father, Harsh, had had a girl friend at university, and whether he had gotten into mischief. She liked it all very much, she liked his family and immediately thought how nice it would be to come to New Delhi with Max and Mousie on holiday and meet them all again, so Mousie could get to know Harsh's two children. That was Suvarna, she always liked people immediately and immediately thought about how to keep in touch with them and how to deepen the friendship.

In the evening, Harsh, Mandira and Suvarna went to an in-location. The outside temperature was pleasant. They decided to sit on the roof terrace. After two cocktails that weren't too strong, the mood became a little more exuberant. Mandira and Suvarna teamed up and started teasing Harsh a little bit - how he never found a parking space, how he tried to look cool when other women were around, what Suvarna could, but would not give away from former times - and both kept laughing and laughing and laughing, at their own jokes.

Harsh told Mandira to watch her drinking; upon which Mandira said,

It's all right, look, I haven't divulged anything yet.

Suvarna was on her way back from the restroom when she heard this.

Harsh also said: Yes, we all know everything, we know about the adoption plans, about the tenants, about her affairs with men, about the marriage crisis, but she doesn't know that we know, and we'll leave it at that, there's no point in serving up everything now, we're having a good time and it's fine, let’s just keep to that!

Suvarna arrived at the table. She did not say anything, because she thought at that moment, if they wanted to tell it, they would have mentioned it themselves, why should she embarrass them with questions, it was such a nice evening, so she just left it aside.

Mandira and I are at the restaurant with her right now; yes, she had a drink, but so did Mandira, Harsh wrote.

For us, what counts is that Suvarna has been drinking.

It's Saturday night, we are meeting after twenty-two years, and both women are just enjoying the evening, there's nothing wrong with that.

You don't need to defend her. We told you all about how things are. Keep watching, take pictures, and let us know, Deborah wrote back.

Harsh and Mandira brought Suvarna back to the hotel. On the way there, Mandira and Suvarna were giggling like schoolgirls, laughing at everything and nothing, they were having a good time. When they reached the hotel, Mandira and Harsh suggested that if they had time, they could have dinner together again the next evening.

Yes, that would be great, Suvarna replied without hesitation and was happy.

It was already after midnight. At the hotel reception she asked how long they served breakfast in the morning, as she intended to sleep until the last possible minute without missing breakfast time. Okay, there would be enough time to lie in.

When she was in bed, she wrote a message to Max,

I’m back at the hotel. It was a really nice day with the whole family and a very pleasant evening with Mandira and Harsh. We can talk on the phone tomorrow, oops, I mean today, in a few hours. It's a bit late I'm going to bed now. It was really funny tonight. Sleep tight! Good night.

Then she called Prabhakar in the USA, he replied quite curtly and just said he was on the road and couldn't talk. So, she sent him some pictures of the evening.

He wrote back, Nice!

Huh? Was her first thought, that's all, just ‘nice’? He must have had a hard day! But then she remembered that he was on the road, probably it was due to that. She could not have known that this was their second last exchange, and that the last one two months later would be just as brief. Nor could she know that the November meeting in Singapore that they had arranged would not take place.

The network and especially the women's group had contacted him long before, and his connection with Suvarna had already been successfully distorted. Later, she would be surprised, how he could allow twenty-six years of friendship, at least she had thought it was friendship, admittedly with a large interruption of nineteen years, but still with regular contact again since three years, to be exchanged against manipulated stories and networking with unknown people, known for a few months through the social networks. And this, after he had told her that he was glad to be in contact with her again after nineteen years and that he did not want to lose the friendship with her under any circumstances. Well! She really couldn't have known or imagined any of this.

The next morning, she only woke up just a little before ten. After breakfast, she immediately started working on her presentation for Monday. She took her job very seriously and thoroughly enjoyed doing it, because she loved her field of work. It was not that easy to gain an insight into a project that had been running for several years in such a short time, that is, within one week, to understand and analyse the whole content and to present the results at the end of the week. But she was good in her job Max was proud of her and motivated her to keep going, because he had seen that she really loved what she was doing.

Suvarna, you're good at your job. Keep in mind, it's not about whether you are or can be the best at your job, it's about giving your best. You are committed, you like it a lot and you do it well, keep it up!

For lunch she just wanted to have a little snack, because she had made an appointment for a massage in the afternoon.